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Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Her she comes, Miss Bubblehead.

I really tried to avoid commenting on the controversy about Miss California, Carrie Prejean. There are several reasons to avoid the topic. First and foremost, ditzy beauty queens are of absolutely zero interest. I expect them to say stupid things. Miss Prejean, being some sort of fundamentalist Christian (albeit one with little hesitation to flash her breasts in skimpy outfits) is thus doubly expected to say something stupid. And she did.

But, being intellectually challenged Prejean doesn’t know when to shut her trap. She is now convinced that she is a victim because she ought to be Miss America instead of the second-place loser. Prejean is utterly misrepresenting the facts of the case to play the victim card.

Basically one of the more contemptuous people around, in my opinion, Perez Hilton, asked Prejean what she thought about gay marriage. Prejean totally bumbled the answer. To be clear, I don’t mean that she took the wrong position, though I think she did. I mean that her answer was incoherent, muddled and incredibly badly articulated. She came across like a brainless bimbo, caught in the headlights, who had no idea what to do so she panicked. She put her mouth in gear long, long before she took her brain out of neutral. Her answer so was badly done that she’s lucky they didn’t take out back and put her out of our misery.

If you look at Prejean’s statement you will see precisely how incoherent and muddled it was. Prejean first headed off in one direction by speaking about how she was proud that America was a country where people could choose. Her exact words: “I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land that you choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage….”

Her first state of fact is wrong. America is not a country where people may choose same-sex marriage. Forty-six states ban same-sex marriage. To pretend that Americans have this choice is absurd. Next, instead of referring to heterosexual marriage she comes up with the strange label of “opposite marriage.”

So, after misstating the facts and then coining an awkward and somewhat incoherent label she plows forward: “You know what, in my country and my family I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman.”

That sentence is so badly worded that I’m not precisely sure what she means. I get that she thinks only straight couples should have the right to marry. But this phrase about “in my country” seems to contradict her previous sentence about how people can choose one or the other. Or, is she saying that she can take this position in her country and her family? Is her country and family taking the position? What does this woman mean?

She also says, “that’s how I was raised and those how I think it should be between a man and a woman.” With her previous comment about how in her family that was what she believed, and then her comment about how she was raised, you’d think she was saying that her family also thought this way. Yet in subsequent interviews she says her sister supports gay couples marrying and said she wasn’t speaking for her mother either, though apparently her father agrees with her.

While it appears she is telling you this was how she was raised her later interviews implied that her family, with the exception of her father, doesn’t hold those beliefs. S claimed her sister is an “advocate” for gay rights, though she was very, very quick to point out that her sister is not gay. So what was she saying?

The purpose of hard questions is to see if the woman in question is composed and articulate, that she can explain in a reasonable way, precisely what she thinks. Regardless of the position that Prejean took she made a dog’s breakfast out her answer. The muddle, inarticulate, somewhat confusing answer that she gave was sufficient reason to mark her down for the interview section of the contest. And, if she was in a close race with the winner, it could be enough to warrant putting her into second.

But fundamentalists have a victim complex; they always have, even though no one has ever voted to strip them of a right. Prejean was petty and nasty after her loss and told the press: “I feel like I won. I feel like I’m the winner, I really do” And she claimed that the only reason she lost was because she was sticking up for God. It is so nice that bubble-headed beauty queens (anyone remember Anita Bryant) have direct contact with the Almighty and speak on his behalf down here. But then she also says God was testing her with the question. So was God testing her or was she speaking for God?

What surprises me is that she claims that she “studied” to answer that question. She said: “Out of all the topics I studied up on, I dreaded that one, I prayed I would not be asked about gay marriage. If I had any other question, I know I would have won.”

If she studied that question then her muddled answer clearly indicates she was not the right person to win. Apparently if she was praying about this, then God was listening to her or he decided she should lose. If the former, that poses problems for her religious beliefs, if the latter, it removes her excuse to whine. Apparently her losing was God’s will so she really ought to shut up about it.

One other comment that just doesn’t ring true is her claim that her “gay rights advocate” sister told came to her and told her that there was nothing wrong with her answer “because you stood up for what was right.” If, as Prejean has claimed, her sister supports gay marriage then precisely would the sister applaud her to standing up “for what was right?” Clearly, if the sister advocates gay marriage she doesn’t believe her sister is right. If she believes her sister is right then she can’t believe in gay marriage. Once again Miss Bubblehead has given us two sentences that appear contradictory. I know she’s a fundamentalist, and thus not bothered by irrational contradictions being held simultaneously.

But, since the winner of Miss America has to at least make an effort at being coherent and logical in her answers, Prejean really shouldn’t whine that she lost. She deserved to lose because logic, reason and the clear articulation of her views (no matter how wrong) are a necessary component of Miss America and Prejean fell far short of the ideal.

Photo: Miss Prejean showing her Christian morality by flaunting her mammary glands to millions of television viewers. Apparently that is what would Jesus would do.